


Have Done With Woes

by athousandwinds



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-03
Updated: 2008-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do I explain this fic? Let me count the ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Done With Woes

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[**athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): I am a conspiracy theorist. Kit Marlowe was too awesome to die.  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): Definitely!  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): and if he DID he was totally murdered  
> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[ **athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): Elizabethan conspiracy! We need to write a book about how Marlowe survived his murder and went around solving crimes. No, wait! Ben Jonson and Shakespeare solve crimes; Marlowe haunts them and gives snarky commentary!  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): and and idk how but there is OT3. Ghost OT3  
> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[ **athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): And Jonson is always trying to get the Rose Theatre shut down and stuff, but he can never get the evidence. And the first case is totally a set-up by Marlowe to get Thomas Kyd killed.  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): :D :D :D  
> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[ **athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): And at one point, Shakespeare asks why Marlowe is still hanging around and Marlowe replies with, I don't know, to be or not to be.  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): ......  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): and shakespeare and marlowe are in ~love~  
> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[ **athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): Only it is a love marked by much artistic plagiarism, because Marlowe keeps trying to write poetry and Shakespeare keeps nicking it. Just to be all meta.  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): yes! and jonson just sits back and laughs at them  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): and secretly steals all their best ideas when they're not paying attention  
> [](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/profile)[ **athousandwinds**](http://athousandwinds.livejournal.com/): And Marlowe keeps going OT3~ at him, and Jonson is just like, WTFno, I am not crazy like you and Will (because Shakespeare had to be a little bit crazy to be a genius).  
> [](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/profile)[ **just_marzipan**](http://just-marzipan.livejournal.com/): (definitely!)

“Ow,” said Christopher Marlowe, momentarily bereft of his dignity. Not that he’d ever had much to begin with, to be frank; at one (many) point(s) in his short career he had been temporarily empty of pocket and reduced to table-dancing for ha’pennies. He still hadn’t quite forgiven Ben for advertising it to the general public.

He drifted over to the door, barely bothering to glance over at his cooling corpse. He was dead; well, there were worse things. So far, this did not appear to be Hell; some private suspicions had been proven correct. Tom would be pleased.

Not that Kit would be telling him that. Let him sweat in peril of his mortal soul. Dante had reserved his last and worst circle for traitors, damn him.

“I hath two eyes pairéd, thou varlet!” he said triumphantly to Ingram, who didn’t even have the decency to let the body of his victim alone, but was poking the bloody wound on Kit’s brow with a curious finger. “Do what thou wilt with that vain mortal shell./It is but fine dust, as it ever was.”

Ingram blinked and looked up. “Didst thou speak a word, Frizer?”

“Is’t that thou art mad, or deaf?”

“Not deaf, then I would not have heard a thing.”

“If thou didst ever hold me dear, villains,” Kit said, wincing, “Speak in meter, that holy tongue of gods.”

“No, I’m _sure_ I heard something.”

“Thou art accurséd spawn of Hecate,” Kit told them. “Cecil’s dogs, fawning at his flute and bells.”

“Thou art simple,” said Frizer in disgust. “Peace, I will settle our reckoning.”

“Take Marlowe’s purse,” Ingram said. “He can settle our bill; we have settled his.”

“Punning is the refuge of the slow mind,” Kit informed him. He thought to clarify, and added, “But wordplay is the play of playwrights’ words.”

Frizer went out – walking straight through Kit in the process, much to Kit’s annoyance and Frizer’s utter, insulting indifference – and Ingram was still staring at the corpse. It was difficult, even so soon, to think of it as his own.

“Where art thou now, sweet Kit?” he asked, so quiet as to be almost inaudible. “In Heaven? – more likely Hell. Wherefore thy recklessness? Thou must have known thy end in thy beginning.”

“I did not,” Kit said, so aggravated he forgot iambic pentameter. “And who gavest thou permission to call me ‘thee’? I never did.” He thought for a second, and then added: “And I am not thy ‘sweet’, either.”

Ingram reacted again, far more fiercely than Kit had expected.

“I – this room is cursed!”

“I would lay my good life, such as it is,” Kit said darkly. “Thou shalt never sleep but for dreams of me/Phantoms shall haunt thee in the day and night.”

He would have said “you” rather than “thou”, but he felt that becoming a murder’d soul at Ingram’s hand gave him the privilege of familiarity.

Frizer returned a moment later and Ingram hustled him out. “Call a priest, good Frizer, call a minister, call Her Majesty the Queen; this room is haunted by the ghost of what we have done this day.”

Frizer sighed.

“I had grown tir’d of thy fears anyway,” Kit called after them.

\---

“Hast thou heardst the news?” Ben asked Will that evening. Will was in his usual state; which was to say, a mess. He did seem, to his credit, to be slightly more of a mess than was customary for him. Grief hit him hard.

“I did,” Will said, his voice melodic and in a minor key.

“Will Kempe had it from a mate down at the docklands. Poor Kit.”

“Richard said he always knew Kit would come to a bad end,” Will said, the harmonics of his voice going suddenly, jarringly flat.

“A bad end for Richard; for Kit it was right and true,” Ben said, intending to soothe.

“Senseless and sordid,” said Will.

“…As I said.”

Will ignored him and began to write again. _Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee [he kills her]_.

“Art thou working?” Ben asked curiously after a few minutes.

“Not if thou dost interrupt me.”

“Oh, fine.”

 _‘Tis true, ‘tis true: witness my knife’s sharp point. [He stabs the EMPRESS.]_

“It _is_ true,” Will said after some little time had passed. “Canst thou conceive it?”

“I cannot conceive it, nor anything else,” Ben said, with the snigger of a twelve year old boy. Will sighed; he could feel a headache starting.

 _Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!_

“Wherefore dost thou suppose the deed was done?”

“Wherefore dost thou _think_?” Ben rolled his eyes. “Or dost thou think at all?”

“Wrong!”

Will blinked, then shook his head. He must be tired, he was having strange fancies. Which were not out of the way when it came to Kit Marlowe, but not now that he was dead. That would be – Will paused, suddenly struck with inspiration.

“I thought of writing love of Death into _Titus Andronicus_ ,” he said. “Dost thou approve?”

“Thou hast enough death in _Titus Andronicus_ ,” Ben said. “If thou writ a soliloquy on man’s desire for Death, I could not call it subtle.”

“Ben, thou speak’st of _Titus Andronicus_ ,” said Kit. “Even if thou lovest Will best of all men, thou couldst not call it ‘subtle’.”

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Will cried, and then, being Will, wrote it down just in case.

“Thou art dead and gone,” Ben said to the apparition. “At least, thou art not buried, but thou art dead, but thou clearly art not gone – ”

“I praise thy powers of observation, truly I do,” said Kit.

“ – And besides,” Ben said, not missing a beat, “where dost thou get off saying I do not love Will best of all men?”

“Why,” Kit said, “thou lovest _me_ best of all men, of course. Will is a close second,” he added, rather patronisingly. Will was smiling too widely to notice. Ben threatened to beat his head against the wall.

“But how _didst_ thou come to be in such a state?” Will demanded, after attempting to embrace Kit and falling through him several times.

“Let us speak in blank verse; I fear list’ners,” Kit said, glancing suspiciously at the door.

“Thou know’st I form meter slowly,” Ben complained. “Didst thou mean to silence me?”

“Thou hast divinéd my intentions well,” Kit informed him. “Now, tell me: wilt thou be mine avenger?”

“What is it that thou wouldst have of me, Kit?” Will asked, utterly genuine. Ben groaned in advance.

“Lord Burghley’s damnéd soul, sweet William,” Kit said, a hint of coaxing in his voice.

“Has vile Death addled thy bright-burning wits?” Will enquired, much to Ben’s relief.

“Of course not,” he said, sticking his oar in before Kit could reply. “Life addled them long before Death got anywhere.”

“Saith a man who never lived, Benjamin,” Kit said with an infuriating smile, and in ten syllables, fuck him.

“And all this nonsense is predicated on the notion that His Lordship has a soul that _either_ side can claim. Or would claim.”

“If one good deed in life he did, he doth repent it from his very soul,” Kit said, looking unusually thoughtful. Will, like a magpie, hastily scribbled it down before he forgot. “Yes, Ben is – ” he paused, grimacing, and then forced the word out – “ _right_.”

“O, sweet day,” Ben said, equally appalled.

“What about Tom, then? Wilt thou at least give Tom a bit of tongue?”

“Like you do, or like Will did?”

“Will did? I would I could have seen that.”

“No, Will shouted at him.”

“Well, I would I could have seen that, too. Wilt thou repeat thy performance in a venue of mine choosing, Will?”

“If you like.” Will laid down his quill carefully, seemingly not noticing the ink which stained his fingers from tip to knuckle.

“I would that thou wouldst blot thy work,” Kit said, resting his hands just above Will’s so that it looked as if they were touching.

“I never blot a line,” Will said, his voice low and harmonic again.

“I would you blotted a thousand,” Ben said crossly. “O, that’s not a bad quip, Mercury!”

“Watch him run it into the ground,” Kit warned Will, who smiled beatifically.

“I don’t mind.”

“Yes, because we’re all one happy little family here, aren’t we?”

“Well, _a_ family, at least.”

“Which remindeth me, Tom was complaining that thou dost never wash the dishes.”

“I _knew_ that was wherefore he betrayed me.”

“I thought thou wert just bad in bed.”

“ _Never_ , thou hump-backed, small-cocked lecher! Will can tell you himself. Will!”

“Hmm? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening…”


End file.
